Preamble 15: “If you are Frightened”

When Christopher Gilham, Graham McCaffrey and I undertook to pull together an edited collection called On the Pedagogy of Suffering (2015), our relations to such an audacious topic were quite varied. Graham Mc-Caffrey’s background is in nursing, and his work often involved facing the most dire moments of suffering. Christopher Gilham worked with troubled children in schools and was often called upon to visit classrooms and teachers and students at the worst of times.

My own relations to these matters of suffering are far more meager, for now. I began with the almost flirtatious interest in how, in classroom, when students become taken by the onrush of insight into a rich and abundant topic, they will lean inwards into the difficult work that arises. I think, for example, of going into a Grade One class years ago (Jennifer Batycky’s class, in fact [see Chapter 8]), and the children were tracing out letters in their books after discussions about repetition and practice and the woes of that sore hot spot on your middle finger from gripping the pencil tightly. In a lull, I said to the class “Do you know why you are finding it hard to learn to write?”